Thursday 9 May 2013

working backwards...

...from the Normandy posts...

Last bank-holiday weekend we spent a night in sun/cider soaked Bristol.

Couldn't help noticing that nothing pre-1960 seemed to have been affected by the 'See No Evil' graffiti project around Nelson Street.

One building that was deemed a worthy canvas is the former Magistrates court.  Couldn't find out name of the architects via Google as usual but did find some really intriguing pictures of the interior here.
as you can see the building is for sale.  It deserves a repreive from the predictable calls for it's demolition and 'city's biggest eyesore' tags, so if you're feeling flush why not step in.  I'll convert it for you into an inner-city mansion.

the actual biggest eyesore in Bristol is the interior of the Marriot Royal Hotel (about as royal as Coronation chicken) and which I couldn't bring myself to photograph.

I thought on the next visit we could try the other city centre Marriot as it's in a decent 60/70ss building but unfortunately they've Victorianised the insides .  Here's the outside and the entrance lobby


nice chandelier.

The only interesting modern architeture I spotted apart from the Magistrates Court were carparks...


I should subtitle this post 'Becoming Alan' because, following on from carparks I'm now going to badger you about (assume Partridgesque voice)...
 ...window replacement!
I once asked a London planning officer why his department frequently gave consent to replace original windows of their council housing stock (usually interwar or 60s/70s) with ugly UPVC , and the answer appeared to be that, whilst the planners didn't always like them, they also didn't like to say 'no' to, as it were, themselves. So slight conflict of interest to the considerable public detriment.

The picture above therefore shows a very rare thing; a sympathetic window replacement to a building type which doesn't usually get the honour. 

The other thing that Bristol has is good roofs...from Brunel's Temple Meads train sheds to the old Brook Bond tea packaging factory (now 'Spike Island' studios/gallery/workshops) and the city centre market hall (name of which have forgotten)...
vaulted in-situ concrete roofs at Spike Island


To my mind there are not enough Peter Randall Page works around...


And that's about it from Bristol unless anyone can tell me who the building below is by?  John Launtner maybe?  The model was sitting unattended in one of the Spike Island studios...

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